Jean Christophe: In Paris by Romain Rolland

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Disorder in order. Untidy officials offhanded in manner. Travelersprotesting against the rules and regulations, to which they submitted allthe same. Christophe was in France. After having satisfied the curiosity ofthe customs, he took his seat again in the train for Paris. Night was overthe fields that were soaked with the rain. The hard lights of the stationsaccentuated the sadness of the interminable plain buried in darkness.The trains, more and more numerous, that passed, rent the air with theirshrieking whistles, which broke upon the torpor of the sleeping passengers.The train was nearing Paris.

Christophe was ready to get out an hour before they ran in; he had jammedhis hat down on his head; he had buttoned his coat up to his neck for fearof the robbers, with whom he had been told Paris was infested; twenty timeshe had got up and sat down; twenty times he had moved his bag from therack to the seat, from the seat to the rack, to the exasperation of hisfellow-passengers, against whom he knocked, every time with his usualclumsiness.

Just as they were about to run into the station the train suddenly stoppedin the darkness. Christophe flattened his nose against the window and triedvainly to look out. He turned towards his fellow-travelers, hoping to finda friendly glance which would encourage him to ask where they were. Butthey were all asleep or pretending to be so: they were bored and scowling:not one of them made any attempt to discover why they had stopped.Christophe was surprised by their indifference: these stiff, somnolentcreatures were so utterly unlike the French of his imagination! At last hesat down, discouraged, on his bag, rocking with every jolt of the train,and in his turn he was just dozing off when he was roused by the noise ofthe doors being opened.... Paris!... His fellow-travelers were alreadygetting out.

Jostling and jostled, he walked towards the exit of the station, refusingthe porter who offered to carry his bag. With a peasant's suspiciousness hethought every one was going to rob him. He lifted his precious bag on tohis shoulder and walked straight ahead, indifferent to the curses of thepeople as he forced his way through them. At last he found himself in thegreasy streets of Paris.

He was too much taken up with the business in hand, the finding oflodgings, and too weary of the whirl of carriages into which he was swept,to think of looking at anything. The first thing was to look for a room.There was no lack of hotels: the station was surrounded with them on allsides: their names were flaring in gas letters. Christophe wanted to finda less dazzling place than any of these: none of them seemed to him tobe humble enough for his purse. At last in a side street he saw a dirtyinn with a cheap eating-house on the ground floor. It was called _Hotelde la Civilisation_. A fat man in his shirt-sleeves was sitting smokingat a table: he hurried forward as he saw Christophe enter. He could notunderstand a word of his jargon: but at the first glance he marked andjudged the awkward childish German, who refused to let his bag out of hishands, and struggled hard to make himself understood in an incrediblelanguage. He took him up an evil-smelling staircase to an airless roomwhich opened on to a closed court. He vaunted the quietness of the room, towhich no noise from outside could penetrate: and he asked a good price forit. Christophe only half understood him; knowing nothing of the conditionsof life in Paris, and with his shoulder aching with the weight of hisbag, he accepted everything: he was, eager to be alone. But hardly was heleft alone when he was struck by the dirtiness of it all: and to avoidsuccumbing to the melancholy which was creeping over him, he went out againvery soon after having dipped his face in the dusty water, which was greasyto the touch. He tried hard not to see and not to feel, so as to escapedisgust.

He went down into the street. The October mist was thick and keenly cold:it had that stale Parisian smell, in which are mingled the exhalations ofthe factories of the outskirts and the heavy breath of the town. He couldnot see ten yards in front of him. The light of the gas-jets flickered likea candle on the point of going out. In the semi-darkness there were crowdsof people moving in all directions. Carriages moved in front of each other,collided, obstructed the road, stemming the flood of people like a dam. Theoaths of the drivers, the horns and bells of the trams, made a deafeningnoise. The roar, the clamor, the smell of it all, struck fearfully on themind and heart of Christophe. He stopped for a moment, but was at onceswept on by the people behind him and borne on by the current. He went downthe _Boulevard de Strasbourg_, seeing nothing, bumping awkwardly into thepassers-by. He had eaten nothing since morning. The cafes, which he foundat every turn, abashed and revolted him, for they were all so crowded. Heapplied to a policeman; but he was so slow in finding words that the mandid not even take the trouble to hear him out, and turned his back on himin the middle of a sentence and shrugged his shoulders. He went on walkingmechanically. There was a small crowd in front of a shop-window. Hestopped mechanically. It was a photograph and picture-postcard shop: therewere pictures of girls in chemises, or without them: illustrated papersdisplayed obscene jests. Children and young girls were looking at themcalmly. There was a slim girl with red hair who saw Christophe lost incontemplation and accosted him. He looked at her and did not understand.She took his arm with a silly smile. He shook her off, and rushed away,blushing angrily. There were rows of cafe concerts: outside the doors weredisplayed grotesque pictures of the comedians. The crowd grew thicker andthicker. Christophe was struck by the number of vicious faces, prowlingrascals, vile beggars, painted women sickeningly scented. He was frozen byit all. Weariness, weakness, and the horrible feeling of nausea, which moreand more came over him, turned him sick and giddy. He set his teeth andwalked on more quickly. The fog grew denser as he approached the Seine.The whirl of carriages became bewildering. A horse slipped and fell on itsside: the driver flogged it to make it get up: the wretched beast, helddown by its harness, struggled and fell down again, and lay still as thoughit were dead. The sight of it--common enough--was the last drop thatmade the wretchedness that filled the soul of Christophe flow over. Themiserable struggles of the poor beast, surrounded by indifferent andcareless faces, made him feel bitterly his own insignificance among thesethousands of men and women--the feeling of revulsion, which for the lasthour had been choking him, his disgust with all these human beasts, withthe unclean atmosphere, with the morally repugnant people, burst forth inhim with such violence that he could not breathe. He burst into tears. Thepassers-by looked in amazement at the tall young man whose face was twistedwith grief. He strode along with the tears running down his cheeks, andmade no attempt to dry them. People stopped to look at him for a moment:and if he had been able to read the soul of the mob, which seemed to himto be so hostile, perhaps in some of them he might have seen--mingled, nodoubt, with a little of the ironic feeling of the Parisians for any sorrowso simple and ridiculous as to show itself--pity and brotherhood. But hesaw nothing: his tears blinded him.

He found himself in a square, near a large fountain. He bathed his handsand dipped his face in it. A little news-vendor watched him curiously andpassed comment on him, waggishly though not maliciously: and he picked uphis hat for him--Christophe had let it fall. The icy coldness of the waterrevived Christophe. He plucked up courage again. He retraced his steps, butdid not look about him: he did not even think of eating: it would have beenimpossible for him to speak to anybody: it needed the merest trifle to sethim off weeping again. He was worn out. He lost his way, and wandered aboutaimlessly until he found himself in front of his hotel, just when he hadmade up his mind that he was lost. He had forgotten even the name of thestreet in which he lodged.

He went up to his horrible room. He was empty, and his eyes were burning:he was aching body and soul as he sank down into a chair in the corner ofthe room: he stayed like that for a couple of hours and could not stir. Atlast he wrenched himself out of his apathy and went to bed. He fell intoa fevered slumber, from which he awoke every few minutes, feeling that hehad been asleep for hours. The room was stifling: he was burning from headto foot: he was horribly thirsty: he suffered from ridiculous nightmares,which clung to him even after he had opened his eyes: sharp pains thuddedin him like the blows of a hammer. In the middle of the night he awoke,overwhelmed by despair, so profound that he all but cried out: he stuffedthe bedclothes into his mouth so as not to be heard: he felt that he wasgoing mad. He sat up in bed, and struck a light. He was bathed in sweat. Hegot up, opened his bag to look for a handkerchief. He laid his hand on anold Bible, which his mother had hidden in his linen. Christophe had neverread much of the Book: but it was a comfort beyond words for him to findit at that moment. The Bible had belonged to his grandfather and to hisgrandfather's father. The heads of the family had inscribed on a blank pageat the end their names and the important dates of their lives--births,marriages, deaths. His grandfather had written in pencil, in his largehand, the dates when he had read and re-read each chapter: the Book wasfull of tags of yellowed paper, on which the old man had jotted down hissimple thoughts. The Book used to rest on a shelf above his bed, and heused often to take it down during the long, sleepless nights and holdconverse with it rather than read it. It had been with him to the hourof his death, as it had been with his father. A century of the joys andsorrows of the family was breathed forth from the pages of the Book.Holding it in his hands, Christophe felt less lonely.

He opened it at the most somber words of all:

_Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? Are not his days alsolike the days of an hireling?

When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise and the night be gone? and I amfull of tossings to and fro unto the dawn of the day.

All greatness is good, and the height of sorrow tops deliverance. Whatcasts down and overwhelms and blasts the soul beyond all hope is mediocrityin sorrow and joy, selfish and niggardly suffering that has not thestrength to be rid of the lost pleasure, and in secret lends itself toevery sort of degradation to steal pleasure anew. Christophe was braced upby the bitter savor that he found in the old Book: the wind of Sinai comingfrom vast and lonely spaces and the mighty sea to sweep away the steamyvapors. The fever in Christophe subsided. He was calm again, and lay downand slept peacefully until the morrow. When he opened his eyes again it wasday. More acutely than ever he was conscious of the horror of his room: hefelt his loneliness and wretchedness: but he faced them. He was no longerdisheartened: he was left only with a sturdy melancholy. He read over nowthe words of Job:

_Even though God slay me yet would I trust in Him._

He got up. He was ready calmly to face the fight.

He made up his mind there and then to set to work. He knew only two peoplein Paris: two young fellow-countrymen: his old friend Otto Diener, who wasin the office of his uncle, a cloth merchant in the _Mail_ quarter: and ayoung Jew from Mainz, Sylvain Kohn, who had a post in a great publishinghouse, the address of which Christophe did not know.

He had been very intimate with Diener when he was fourteen or fifteen.He had had for him one of those childish friendships which precede love,and are themselves a sort of love. [Footnote: See _Jean-Christophe_--I:"The Morning."] Diener had loved him too. The shy, reserved boy had beenattracted by Christophe's gusty independence: he had tried hard to imitatehim, quite ridiculously: that had both irritated and flattered Christophe.Then they had made plans for the overturning of the world. In the endDiener had gone abroad for his education in business, and they did not seeeach other again: but Christophe had news of him from time to time from thepeople in the town with whom Diener remained on friendly terms.

As for Sylvain Kohn, his relation with Christophe had been of another kindaltogether. They had been at school together, where the young monkey hadplayed many pranks on Christophe, who thrashed him for it when he sawthe trap into which he had fallen. Kohn did not put up a fight: he letChristophe knock him down and rub his face in the dust, while he howled;but he would begin again at once with a malice that never tired--until theday when he became really afraid, Christophe having seriously threatened tokill him.

Christophe went out early. He stopped to breakfast at a cafe. In spiteof his self-consciousness, he forced himself to lose no opportunity ofspeaking French. Since he had to live in Paris, perhaps for years, he hadbetter adapt himself as quickly as possible to the conditions of lifethere, and overcome his repugnance. So he forced himself, although hesuffered horribly, to take no notice of the sly looks of the waiter ashe listened to his horrible lingo. He was not discouraged, and went onobstinately constructing ponderous, formless sentences and repeating themuntil he was understood.

He set out to look for Diener. As usual, when he had an idea in his head,he saw nothing of what was going on about him. During that first walk hisonly impression of Paris was that of an old and ill-kept town. Christophewas accustomed to the towns of the new German Empire, that were both veryold and very young, towns in which there is expressed a new birth of pride:and he was unpleasantly surprised by the shabby streets, the muddy roads,the hustling people, the confused traffic--vehicles of every sort andshape: venerable horse omnibuses, steam trams, electric trams, all sortsof trams--booths on the pavements, merry-go-rounds of wooden horses (ormonsters and gargoyles) in the squares that were choked up with statues ofgentlemen in frock-coats: all sorts of relics of a town of the Middle Agesendowed with the privilege of universal suffrage, but quite incapable ofbreaking free from its old vagabond existence. The fog of the preceding dayhad turned to a light, soaking rain. In many of the shops the gas was lit,although it was past ten o'clock.

Christophe lost his way in the labyrinth of streets round the _Place desVictoires_, but eventually found the shop he was looking for in the _Ruede la Banque_. As he entered he thought he saw Diener at the back of thelong, dark shop, arranging packages of goods, together with some of theassistants. But he was a little short-sighted, and could not trust hiseyes, although it was very rarely that they deceived him. There was ageneral movement among the people at the back of the shop when Christophegave his name to the clerk who approached him: and after a confabulation ayoung man stepped forward from the group, and said in German:

"Herr Diener is out."

"Out? For long?"

"I think so. He has just gone."

Christophe thought for a moment; then he said:

"Very well. I will wait."

The clerk was taken aback, and hastened to add:

"But he won't be back before two or three."

"Oh! That's nothing," replied Christophe calmly. "I haven't anything to doin Paris. I can wait all day if need be."

The young man looked at him in amazement, and thought he was joking. ButChristophe had forgotten him already. He sat down quietly in a corner, withhis back turned towards the street: and it looked as though he intended tostay there.

The clerk went back to the end of the shop and whispered to his colleagues:they were most comically distressed, and cast about for some means ofgetting rid of the insistent Christophe.

After a few uneasy moments, the door of the office was opened and HerrDiener appeared. He had a large red face, marked with a purple scar downhis cheek and chin, a fair mustache, smooth hair, parted on one side, agold-rimmed eyeglass, gold studs in his shirt-front, and rings on hisfat fingers. He had his hat and an umbrella in his hands. He came up toChristophe in a nonchalant manner. Christophe, who was dreaming as he sat,started with surprise. He seized Diener's hands, and shouted with a noisyheartiness that made the assistants titter and Diener blush. That majesticpersonage had his reasons for not wishing to resume his former relationshipwith Christophe: and he had made up his mind from the first to keep him ata distance by a haughty manner. But he had no sooner come face to face withChristophe than he felt like a little boy again in his presence: he wasfurious and ashamed. He muttered hurriedly:

"In my office.... We shall be able to talk better there."

Christophe recognized Diener's habitual prudence.

But when they were in the office and the door was shut, Diener showed noeagerness to offer him a chair. He remained standing, making clumsyexplanations:

"Very glad.... I was just going out.... They thought I had gone.... But Imust go ... I have only a minute ... a pressing appointment...."

Christophe understood that the clerk had lied to him, and that the liehad been arranged by Diener to get rid of him. His blood boiled: but hecontrolled himself, and said dryly:

"There is no hurry."

Diener drew himself up. He was shocked by such off-handedness.

"What!" he said. "No hurry! In business..." Christophe looked him in theface.

"No."

Diener looked away. He hated Christophe for having so put him to shame. Hemurmured irritably. Christophe cut him short:

"Come," he said. "You know..."

(He used the "_Du_," which maddened Diener, who from the first had beenvainly trying to set up between Christophe and himself the barrier of the"_Sie_")

"You know why I am here?"

"Yes," said Diener. "I know."

(He had heard of Christophe's escapade, and the warrant out against him,from his friends.)

"Then," Christophe went on, "you know that I am not here for fun. I havehad to fly. I have nothing. I must live."

Diener was waiting for that, for the request. He took it with a mixture ofsatisfaction--(for it made it possible for him to feel his superiority overChristophe)--and embarrassment--(for he dared not make Christophe feel hissuperiority as much as he would have liked).

"Ah!" he said pompously. "It is very tiresome, very tiresome. Life hereis hard. Everything is so dear. We have enormous expenses. And all theseassistants..."

Christophe cut him short contemptuously:

"I am not asking you for money."

Diener was abashed. Christophe went on:

"Is your business doing well? Have you many customers?"

"Yes. Yes. Not bad, thank God!..." said Diener cautiously. (He was on hisguard.)

Christophe darted a look of fury at him, and went on:

"You know many people in the German colony?"

"Yes."

"Very well: speak for me. They must be musical. They have children. I willgive them lessons."

Diener was embarrassed at that.

"What is it?" asked Christophe. "Do you think I'm not competent to do thework?"

He was asking a service as though it were he who was rendering it. Diener,who would not have done a thing for Christophe except for the sake ofputting him under an obligation, was resolved not to stir a finger for him.

"It isn't that. You're a thousand times too good for it. Only..."

"What, then?"

"Well, you see, it's very difficult--very difficult--on account of yourposition."

"My position?"

"Yes.... You see, that affair, the warrant.... If that were to be known....It is difficult for me. It might do me harm."

He stopped as he saw Christophe's face go hot with anger: and he addedquickly:

"Not on my own account.... I'm not afraid.... Ah! If I were alone!... Butmy uncle ... you know, the business is his. I can do nothing withouthim...."

He grew more and more alarmed at Christophe's expression, and at thethought of the gathering explosion he said hurriedly--(he was not a badfellow at bottom: avarice and vanity were struggling in him: he would haveliked to help Christophe, at a price):

"Can I lend you fifty francs?"

Christophe went crimson. He went up to Diener, who stepped back hurriedlyto the door and opened it, and held himself in readiness to call for help,if necessary. But Christophe only thrust his face near his and bawled:

"You swine!"

And he flung him aside and walked out through the little throng ofassistants. At the door he spat in disgust.

* * * * *

He strode along down the street. He was blind with fury. The rain soberedhim. Where was he going? He did not know. He did not know a soul. Hestopped to think outside a book-shop, and he stared stupidly at the rowsof books. He was struck by the name of a publisher on the cover of one ofthem. He wondered why. Then he remembered that it was the name of the housein which Sylvain Kohn was employed. He made a note of the address.... Butwhat was the good? He would not go.... Why should he not go?... If thatscoundrel Diener, who had been his friend, had given him such a welcome,what had he to expect from a rascal whom he had handled roughly, who hadgood cause to hate him? Vain humiliations! His blood boiled at the thought.But his native pessimism, derived perhaps from his Christian education,urged him on to probe to the depths of human baseness.

"I have no right to stand on ceremony. I must try everything before I givein."

And an inward voice added:

"And I shall not give in."

He made sure of the address, and went to hunt up Kohn He made up his mindto hit him in the eye at the first show of impertinence.

The publishing house was in the neighborhood of the Madeleine. Christophewent up to a room on the second floor, and asked for Sylvain Kohn. A man inlivery told him that "Kohn was not known." Christophe was taken aback, andthought his pronunciation must be at fault, and he repeated his question:but the man listened attentively, and repeated that no one of that name wasknown in the place. Quite out of countenance, Christophe begged pardon, andwas turning to go when a door at the end of the corridor opened, and he sawKohn himself showing a lady out. Still suffering from the affront put uponhim by Diener, he was inclined to think that everybody was having a joke athis expense. His first thought was that Kohn had seen him, and had givenorders to the man to say that he was not there. His gorge rose at theimpudence of it. He was on the point of going in a huff, when he heard hisname: Kohn, with his sharp eyes, had recognized him: and he ran up to him,with a smile on his lips, and his hands held out with every mark ofextraordinary delight.

Sylvain Kohn was short, thick-set, clean-shaven, like an American; hiscomplexion was too red, his hair too black; he had a heavy, massive face,coarse-featured; little darting, wrinkled eyes, a rather crooked mouth,a heavy, cunning smile. He was modishly dressed, trying to cover up thedefects of his figure, high shoulders, and wide hips. That was the onlything that touched his vanity: he would gladly have put up with any insultif only he could have been a few inches taller and of a better figure.For the rest, he was very well pleased with himself: he thought himselfirresistible, as indeed he was. The little German Jew, clod as he was, hadmade himself the chronicler and arbiter of Parisian fashion and smartness.He wrote insipid society paragraphs and articles in a delicately involvedmanner. He was the champion of French style, French smartness, Frenchgallantry, French wit--Regency, red heels, Lauzun. People laughed at him:but that did not prevent his success. Those who say that in Paris ridiculekills do not know Paris: so far from dying of it, there are people who liveon it: in Paris ridicule leads to everything, even to fame and fortune.Sylvain Kohn was far beyond any need to reckon the good-will that every dayaccumulated to him through his Frankfortian affectations.

He spoke with a thick accent through his nose.

"Ah! What a surprise!" he cried gaily, taking Christophe's hands in hisown clumsy paws, with their stubby fingers that looked as though they werecrammed into too tight a skin. He could not let go of Christophe's hands.It was as though, he were encountering his best friend. Christophe was sostaggered that he wondered again if Kohn was not making fun of him. ButKohn was doing nothing of the kind--or, rather, if he was joking, it wasno more than usual. There was no rancor about Kohn: he was too clever forthat. He had long ago forgotten the rough treatment he had suffered atChristophe's hands: and if ever he did remember it, it did not worry him.He was delighted to have the opportunity of showing his old schoolfellowhis importance and his new duties, and the elegance of his Parisianmanners. He was not lying in expressing his surprise: a visit fromChristophe was the last thing in the world that he expected: and if he wastoo worldly-wise not to know that the visit was of set material purpose,he took it as a reason the more for welcoming him, as it was, in fact, atribute to his power.

"And you have come from Germany? How is your mother?" he asked, with afamiliarity which at any other time would have annoyed Christophe, but nowgave him comfort in the strange city.

"But how was it," asked Christophe, who was still inclined to besuspicious, "that they told me just now that Herr Kohn did not belonghere?"

He went and shook hands with a lady who was passing and smiled grimacingly.Then he came back. He explained that the lady was a writer famous for hervoluptuous and passionate novels. The modern Sappho had a purple ribbonon her bosom, a full figure, bright golden hair round a painted face; shemade a few pretentious remarks in a mannish fashion with the accent ofFranche-Comte.

Kohn plied Christophe with questions. He asked about all the people athome, and what had become of so-and-so, pluming himself on the fact that heremembered everybody. Christophe had forgotten his antipathy; he repliedcordially and gratefully, giving a mass of detail about which Kohn carednothing at all, and presently he broke off again.

"Excuse me," he said.

And he went to greet another lady who had come in.

"Dear me!" said Christophe. "Are there only women writers in France?"

Kohn began to laugh, and said fatuously:

"France is a woman, my dear fellow. If you want to succeed, make up to thewomen."

Christophe did not listen to the explanation, and went on with his ownstory. To put a stop to it, Kohn asked:

"But how the devil do you come here?"

"Ah!" thought Christophe, "he doesn't know. That is why he was so amiable.He'll be different when he knows."

He made it a point of honor to tell everything against himself: the brawlwith the soldiers, the warrant out against him, his flight from thecountry.

Kohn rocked with laughter.

"Bravo!" he cried. "Bravo! That's a good story!"

He shook Christophe's hand warmly. He was delighted by any smack in the eyeof authority: and the story tickled him the more as he knew the heroes ofit: he saw the funny side of it.

"I say," he said, "it is past twelve. Will you give me the pleasure ...?Lunch with me?"

Christophe accepted gratefully. He thought:

"This is a good fellow--decidedly a good fellow. I was mistaken."

They went out together. On the way Christophe put forward his request:

"You see how I am placed. I came here to look for work--musiclessons--until I can make my name. Could you speak for me?"

"Certainly," said Kohn. "To any one you like. I know everybody here. I'm atyour service."

He was glad to be able to show how important he was.

Christophe covered him with expressions of gratitude. He felt that he wasrelieved of a great weight of anxiety.

At lunch he gorged with the appetite of a man who has not broken fast fortwo days. He tucked his napkin round his neck, and ate with his knife.Kohn-Hamilton was horribly shocked by his voracity and his peasant manners.And he was, hurt, too, by the small amount of attention that his guest gaveto his bragging. He tried to dazzle him by telling of his fine connectionsand his prosperity: but it was no good: Christophe did not listen, andbluntly interrupted him. His tongue was loosed, and he became familiar. Hisheart was full, and he overwhelmed Kohn with his simple confidences of hisplans for the future. Above all, he exasperated him by insisting on takinghis hand across the table and pressing it effusively. And he brought him tothe pitch of irritation at last by wanting to clink glasses in the Germanfashion, and, with sentimental speeches, to drink to those at home andto _Vater Rhein_. Kohn saw, to his horror, that he was on the point ofsinging. The people at the next table were casting ironic glances in theirdirection. Kohn made some excuse on the score of pressing business, and gotup. Christophe clung to him: he wanted to know when he could have a letterof introduction, and go and see some one, and begin giving lessons.

"I'll see about it. To-day--this evening," said Kohn. "I'll talk about youat once. You can be easy on that score."

Christophe insisted.

"When shall I know?"

"To-morrow ... to-morrow ... or the day after."

"Very well. I'll come back to-morrow."

"No, no!" said Kohn quickly. "I'll let you know. Don't you worry."

"Oh! it's no trouble. Quite the contrary. Eh? I've nothing else to do inParis in the meanwhile."

"Good God!" thought Kohn.... "No," he said aloud. "But I would rather writeto you. You wouldn't find me the next few days. Give me your address."

Christophe dictated it.

"Good. I'll write you to-morrow."

"To-morrow?"

"To-morrow. You can count on it"

He cut short Christophe's hand-shaking and escaped.

"Ugh!" he thought. "What a bore!"

As he went into his office he told the boy that he would not be in when"the German" came to see him. Ten minutes later he had forgotten him.

Christophe went back to his lair. He was full of gentle thoughts.

"What a good fellow! What a good fellow!" he thought. "How unjust I wasabout him. And he bears me no ill-will!"

He was remorseful, and he was on the point of writing to tell Kohn howsorry he was to have misjudged him, and to beg his forgiveness for all theharm he had done him. The tears came to his eyes as he thought of it. Butit was harder for him to write a letter than a score of music: and after hehad cursed and cursed the pen and ink of the hotel--which were, in fact,horrible--after he had blotted, criss-crossed, and torn up five or sixsheets of paper, he lost patience and dropped it.

The rest of the day dragged wearily: but Christophe was so worn out by hissleepless night and his excursions in the morning that at length he dozedoff in his chair. He only woke up in the evening, and then he went to bed:and he slept for twelve hours on end.

* * * * *

Next day from eight o'clock on he sat waiting for the promised letter. Hehad no doubt of Kohn's sincerity. He did not go out, telling himself thatperhaps Kohn would come round by the hotel on his way to his office. So asnot to be out, about midday he had his lunch sent up from the eating-housedownstairs. Then he sat waiting again. He was sure Kohn would come on hisway back from lunch. He paced up and down his room, sat down, paced up anddown again, opened his door whenever he heard footsteps on the stairs.He had no desire to go walking about Paris to stay his anxiety. He laydown on his bed. His thoughts went back and back to his old mother, whowas thinking of him too--she alone thought of him. He had an infinitetenderness for her, and he was remorseful at having left her. But he didnot write to her. He was waiting until he could tell her that he had foundwork. In spite of the love they had for each other, it would never haveoccurred to either of them to write just to tell their love: letters werefor things more definite than that. He lay on the bed with his hands lockedbehind his head, and dreamed. Although his room was away from the street,the roar of Paris invaded the silence: the house shook. Night came again,and brought no letter.

Came another day like unto the last.

On the third day, exasperated by his voluntary seclusion, Christophedecided to go out. But from the impression of his first evening he wasinstinctively in revolt against Paris. He had no desire to see anything:no curiosity: he was too much taken up with the problem of his own lifeto take any pleasure in watching the lives of others: and the memories oflives past, the monuments of a city, had always left him cold. And so,hardly had he set foot out of doors, than, although he had made up his mindnot to go near Kohn for a week, he went straight to his office.

The boy obeyed his orders, and said that M. Hamilton had left Paris onbusiness. It was a blow to Christophe. He gasped and asked when M. Hamiltonwould return. The boy replied at random:

"In ten days."

Christophe went back utterly downcast, and buried himself in his roomduring the following days. He found it impossible to work. His heart sankas he saw that his small supply of money--the little sum that his motherhad sent him, carefully wrapped up in a handkerchief at the bottom of hisbag--was rapidly decreasing. He imposed a severe regime on himself. Heonly went down in the evening to dinner in the little pot-house, wherehe quickly became known to the frequenters of it as the "Prussian" or"Sauerkraut." With frightful effort, he wrote two or three letters toFrench musicians whose names he knew hazily. One of them had been deadfor ten years. He asked them to be so kind as to give him a hearing. Hisspelling was wild, and his style was complicated by those long inversionsand ceremonious formulae which are the custom in Germany. He addressed hisletters: "To the Palace of the Academy of France." The only man to read hisgave it to his friends as a joke.

After a week Christophe went once more to the publisher's office. This timehe was in luck. He met Sylvain Kohn going out, on the doorstep. Kohn made aface as he saw that he was caught: but Christophe was so happy that he didnot see that. He took his hands in his usual uncouth way, and asked gaily:

"You've been away? Did you have a good time?"

Kohn said that he had had a very good time, but he did not unbend.Christophe went on:

"I came, you know.... They told you, I suppose?... Well, any news? Youmentioned my name? What did they say?"

Kohn looked blank. Christophe was amazed at his frigid manner: he was notthe same man.

"I mentioned you," said Kohn: "but I haven't heard yet. I haven't had time.I have been very busy since I saw you--up to my ears in business. I don'tknow how I can get through. It is appalling. I shall be ill with it all."

"Aren't you well?" asked Christophe anxiously and solicitously.

Kohn looked at him slyly, and replied:

"Not at all well. I don't know what is the matter, the last few days. I'mvery unwell."

"I'm so sorry," said Christophe, taking his arm. "Do be careful. You mustrest. I'm so sorry to have been a bother to you. You should have told me.What is the matter with you, really?"

He took Kohn's sham excuses so seriously that the little Jew was hard putto it to hide his amusement, and disarmed by his funny simplicity. Irony isso dear a pleasure to the Jews--(and a number of Christians in Paris areJewish in this respect)--that they are indulgent with bores, and even withtheir enemies, if they give them the opportunity of tasting it at theirexpense. Besides, Kohn was touched by Christophe's interest in himself. Hefelt inclined to help him.

"I've got an idea," he said. "While you are waiting for lessons, would youcare to do some work for a music publisher?"

Christophe accepted eagerly.

"I've got the very thing," said Kohn. "I know one of the partners in a bigfirm of music publishers--Daniel Hecht. I'll introduce you. You'll see whatthere is to do. I don't know anything about it, you know. But Hecht is areal musician. You'll get on with him all right."

They parted until the following day. Kohn was not sorry to be rid ofChristophe by doing him this service.

* * * * *

Next day Christophe fetched Kohn at his office. On his advice, he hadbrought several of his compositions to show to Hecht. They found him in hismusic-shop near the Opera. Hecht did not put himself out when they wentin: he coldly held out two fingers to take Kohn's hand, did not reply toChristophe's ceremonious bow, and at Kohn's request he took them into thenext room. He did not ask them to sit down. He stood with his back to theempty chimney-place, and stared at the wall.

Daniel Hecht was a man of forty, tall, cold, correctly dressed, a markedPhenician type; he looked clever and disagreeable: there was a scowl on hisface: he had black hair and a beard like that of an Assyrian King, longand square-cut. He hardly ever looked straight forward, and he had anicy brutal way of talking which sounded insulting even when he only said"Good-day." His insolence was more apparent than real. No doubt it emanatedfrom a contemptuous strain in his character: but really it was more a partof the automatic and formal element in him. Jews of that sort are quitecommon: opinion is not kind towards them: that hard stiffness of theirs islooked upon as arrogance, while it is often in reality the outcome of anincurable boorishness in body and soul.

Sylvain Kohn introduced his protege, in a bantering, pretentious voice,with exaggerated praises. Christophe was abashed by his reception, andstood shifting from one foot to the other, holding his manuscripts and hishat in his hand. When Kohn had finished, Hecht, who up to then had seemedto be unaware of Christophe's existence, turned towards him disdainfully,and, without looking at him, said:

"Krafft ... Christophe Krafft.... Never heard the name."

To Christophe it was as though he had been struck, full in the chest. Theblood rushed to his cheeks. He replied angrily:

"You'll hear it later on."

Hecht took no notice, and went on imperturbably, as though Christophe didnot exist:

"Krafft ... no, never heard it."

He was one of those people for whom not to be known to them is a markagainst a man.

He went on in German:

"And you come from the _Rhine-land_?... It's wonderful how many peoplethere are there who dabble in music! But I don't think there is a man amongthem who has any claim to be a musician."

He meant it as a joke, not as an insult: but Christophe did not take it so.He would have replied in kind if Kohn had not anticipated him.

"Oh, come, come!" he said to Hecht. "You must do me the justice to admitthat I know nothing at all about it."

"That's to your credit," replied Hecht.

"If I am to be no musician in order to please you," said Christophe dryly,"I am sorry, but I'm not that."

"People write a great deal in Germany," said Hecht, with scornfulpoliteness.

It made him all the more suspicious of the newcomer to think that he hadwritten so many works, and that he, Daniel Hecht, had not heard of them.

"Well," he said, "I might perhaps find work for you as you are recommendedby my friend Hamilton. At present we are making a collection, a 'Libraryfor Young People,' in which we are publishing some easy pianoforte pieces.Could you 'simplify' the _Carnival_ of Schumann, and arrange it for six andeight hands?"

Christophe was staggered.

"And you offer that to me, to me--me...?"

His naive "Me" delighted Kohn: but Hecht was offended.

"I don't see that there is anything surprising in that," he said. "It isnot such easy work as all that! If you think it too easy, so much thebetter. We'll see about that later on. You tell me you are a good musician.I must believe you. But I've never heard of you."

He thought to himself:

"If one were to believe all these young sparks, they would knock thestuffing out of Johannes Brahms himself."

Christophe made no reply--(for he had vowed to hold himself incheck)--clapped his hat on his head, and turned towards the door. Kohnstopped him, laughing:

"Wait, wait!" he said. And he turned to Hecht: "He has brought some of hiswork to give you an idea."

"Ah!" said Hecht warily. "Very well, then: let us see them."

Without a word Christophe held out his manuscripts. Hecht cast his eyesover them carelessly.

In spite of his apparent indifference he was reading carefully. He was anexcellent musician, and knew his job: he knew nothing outside it: with thefirst bar or two he gauged his man. He was silent as he turned over thepages with a scornful air: he was struck by the talent revealed in them:but his natural reserve and his vanity, piqued by Christophe's manner, kepthim from showing anything. He went on to the end in silence, not missing anote.

"Yes," he said, in a patronizing tone of voice, "they're well enough."

Violent criticism would have hurt Christophe less.

"I don't need to be told that," he said irritably.

"I fancy," said Hecht, "that you showed me them for me to say what Ithought."

"Not at all."

"Then," said Hecht coldly, "I fail to see what you have come for."

"I came to ask for work, and nothing else."

"I have nothing to offer you for the time being, except what I told you.And I'm not sure of that. I said it was possible, that's all."

"And you have no other work to offer a musician like myself?"

"A musician like you?" said Hecht ironically and cuttingly. "Othermusicians at least as good as yourself have not thought the work beneaththeir dignity. There are men whose names I could give you, men who are nowvery well known in Paris, have been very grateful to me for it."

"Then they must have been--swine!" bellowed Christophe.--(He had alreadylearned certain of the most useful words in the French language)--"You arewrong if you think you have to do with a man of that kidney. Do you thinkyou can take me in with looking anywhere but at me, and clipping yourwords? You didn't even deign to acknowledge my bow when I came in.... Butwhat the hell are you to treat me like that? Are you even a musician? Haveyou ever written anything?... And you pretend to teach me how to write--me,to whom writing is life!... And you can find nothing better to offer me,when you have read my music, than a hashing up of great musicians, a filthyscrabbling over their works to turn them into parlor tricks for littlegirls!... You go to your Parisians who are rotten enough to be taught theirwork by you! I'd rather die first!"

It was impossible to stem the torrent of his words.

Hecht said icily:

"Take it or leave it."

Christophe went out and slammed the doors. Hecht shrugged, and said toSylvain Kohn, who was laughing:

"He will come to it like the rest."

At heart he valued Christophe. He was clever enough to feel not only theworth of a piece of work, but also the worth of a man. Behind Christophe'soutburst he had marked a force. And he knew its rarity--in the world ofart more than anywhere else. But his vanity was ruffled by it: nothingwould ever induce him to admit himself in the wrong. He desired loyallyto be just to Christophe, but he could not do it unless Christophe cameand groveled to him. He expected Christophe to return: his melancholyskepticism and his experience of men had told him how inevitably the willis weakened and worn down by poverty.

* * * * *

Christophe went home. Anger had given place to despair. He felt that hewas lost. The frail prop on which he had counted had failed him. He had nodoubt but that he had made a deadly enemy, not only of Hecht, but of Kohn,who had introduced him. He was in absolute solitude in a hostile city.Outside Diener and Kohn he knew no one. His friend Corinne, the beautifulactress whom he had met in Germany, was not in Paris: she was still touringabroad, in America, this time on her own account: the papers publishedclamatory descriptions of her travels. As for the little French governesswhom he had unwittingly robbed of her situation,--the thought of her hadlong filled him with remorse--how often had he vowed that he would findher when he reached Paris. [Footnote: See _Jean-Christophe_--I: "Revolt."]But now that he was in Paris he found that he had forgotten one importantthing: her name. He could not remember it. He could only recollect herChristian name: Antoinette. And then, even if he remembered, how was he tofind a poor little governess in that ant-heap of human beings?

He had to set to work as soon as possible to find a livelihood. He had fivefrancs left. In spite of his dislike of him, he forced himself to ask theinnkeeper if he did not know of anybody in the neighborhood to whom hecould give music-lessons. The innkeeper, who had no great opinion of alodger who only ate once a day and spoke German, lost what respect he hadfor him when he heard that he was only a musician. He was a Frenchman ofthe old school, and music was to him an idler's job. He scoffed:

"The piano!... I don't know. You strum the piano! Congratulations!... But'tis a queer thing to take to that trade as a matter of taste! When I hearmusic, it's just for all the world like listening to the rain.... Butperhaps you might teach me. What do you say, you fellows?" he cried,turning to some fellows who were drinking.

They laughed loudly.

"It's a fine trade," said one of them. "Not dirty work. And the ladies likeit."

Christophe did not rightly understand the French or the jest: he flounderedfor his words: he did not know whether to be angry or not. The innkeeper'swife took pity on him:

"Come, come, Philippe, you're not serious," she said to her husband. "Allthe same," she went on, turning to Christophe, "there is some one who mightdo for you."

"Who?" asked her husband.

"The Grasset girl. You know, they've bought a piano."

"Ah! Those stuck-up folk! So they have."

They told Christophe that the girl in question was the daughter of abutcher: her parents were trying to make a lady of her; they would perhapslike her to have lessons, if only for the sake of making people talk. Theinnkeeper's wife promised to see to it.

Next day she told Christophe that the butcher's wife would like to see him.He went to her house, and found her in the shop, surrounded with greatpieces of meat. She was a pretty, rather florid woman, and she smiledsweetly, but stood on her dignity when she heard why he had come. Quiteabruptly she came to the question of payment, and said quickly that she didnot wish to give much, because the piano is quite an agreeable thing, butnot necessary: she offered him fifty centimes an hour. In any case, shewould not pay more than four francs a week. After that she asked Christophea little doubtfully if he knew much about music. She was reassured, andbecame more amiable when he told her that not only did he know about music,but wrote it into the bargain: that flattered her vanity: it would be agood thing to spread about the neighborhood that her daughter was takinglessons with a composer.

Next day, when Christophe found himself sitting by the piano--a horribleinstrument, bought second-hand, which sounded like a guitar--with thebutcher's little daughter, whose short, stubby fingers fumbled with thekeys; who was unable to tell one note from another; who was bored to tears;who began at once to yawn in his face; and he had to submit to the mother'ssuperintendence, and to her conversation, and to her ideas on music and theteaching of music--then he felt so miserable, so wretchedly humiliated,that he had not even the strength to be angry about it. He relapsed into astate of despair: there were evenings when he could not eat. If in a fewweeks he had fallen so low, where would he end? What good was it to haverebelled against Hecht's offer? The thing to which he had submitted waseven more degrading.

One evening, as he sat in his room, he could not restrain his tears: heflung himself on his knees by his bed and prayed.... To whom did he pray?To whom could he pray? He did not believe in God; he believed that therewas no God.... But he had to pray--he had to pray within his soul. Onlythe mean of spirit never need to pray. They never know the need that comesto the strong in spirit of taking refuge within the inner sanctuary ofthemselves. As he left behind him the humiliations of the day, in the vividsilence of his heart Christophe felt the presence of his eternal Being, ofhis God. The waters of his wretched life stirred and shifted above Him andnever touched Him: what was there in common between that and Him? All thesorrows of the world rushing on to destruction dashed against that rock.Christophe heard the blood beating in his veins, beating like an inwardvoice, crying:

"Eternal ... I am ... I am...."

Well did he know that voice: as long as he could remember he had heardit. Sometimes he forgot it: often for months together he would loseconsciousness of its mighty monotonous rhythm: but he knew that it wasthere, that it never ceased, like the ocean roaring in the night. In themusic of it he found once more the same energy that he gained from itwhenever he bathed in its waters. He rose to his feet. He was fortified.No: the hard life that he led contained nothing of which he need beashamed: he could eat the bread he earned, and never blush for it: it wasfor those who made him earn it at such a price to blush and be ashamed.Patience! Patience! The time would come....

But next day he began to lose patience again: and, in spite of all hisefforts, he did at last explode angrily, one day during a lesson, at thesilly little ninny, who had been maddeningly impertinent and laughed at hisaccent, and had taken a malicious delight in doing exactly the oppositeof what he told her. The girl screamed in response to Christophe's angryshouts. She was frightened and enraged at a man whom she paid daring toshow her no respect. She declared that he had struck her--(Christophe hadshaken her arm rather roughly). Her mother bounced in on them like a Fury,and covered her daughter with kisses and Christophe with abuse. The butcheralso appeared, and declared that he would not suffer any infernal Prussianto take upon himself to touch his daughter. Furious, pale with rage,itching to choke the life out of the butcher and his wife and daughter,Christophe rushed away. His host and hostess, seeing him come in in anabject condition, had no difficulty in worming the story out of him: and itfed the malevolence with which they regarded their neighbors. But by theevening the whole neighborhood was saying that the German was a brute and achild-beater.

* * * * *

Christophe made fresh advances to the music-vendors: but in vain. He foundthe French lacking in cordiality: and the whirl and confusion of theirperpetual agitation crushed him. They seemed to him to live in a state ofanarchy, directed by a cunning and despotic bureaucracy.

One evening, he was wandering along the boulevards, discouraged by thefutility of his efforts, when he saw Sylvain Kohn coming from the oppositedirection. He was convinced that they had quarreled irrevocably and lookedaway and tried to pass unnoticed. But Kohn called to him:

"What became of you after that great day?" he asked with a laugh. "I'vebeen wanting to look you up, but I lost your address.... Good Lord, my dearfellow, I didn't know you! You were epic: that's what you were, epic!"

Christophe stared at him. He was surprised and a little ashamed.

"You're not angry with me?"

"Angry? What an idea!"

So far from being angry, he had been delighted with the way in whichChristophe had trounced Hecht: it had been a treat to him. It reallymattered nothing to him whether Christophe or Hecht was right: he onlyregarded people as source of entertainment: and he saw in Christophe aspring of high comedy, which he intended to exploit to the full.

"You should have come to see me," he went on. "I was expecting you. Whatare you doing this evening? Come to dinner. I won't let you off. Quiteinformal: just a few artists: we meet once a fortnight. You should knowthese people. Come. I'll introduce you."

In vain did Christophe beg to be excused on the score of his clothes.Sylvain Kohn carried him off.

They entered a restaurant on one of the boulevards, and went up to thesecond floor. Christophe found himself among about thirty young men, whoseages ranged from twenty to thirty-five, and they were all engaged inanimated discussion. Kohn introduced him as a man who had just escapedfrom a German prison. They paid no attention to him and did not stop theirpassionate discussion, and Kohn plunged into it at once.

Christophe was shy in this select company, and said nothing: but he wasall ears. He could not grasp--he had great difficulty in following thevolubility of the French--what great artistic interests were in dispute.He listened attentively, but he could only make out words like "trust,""monopoly," "fall in prices," "receipts," mixed up with phrases like "thedignity of art," and the "rights of the author." And at last he saw thatthey were talking business. A certain number of authors, it appeared,belonged to a syndicate and were angry about certain attempts which hadbeen made to float a rival concern, which, according to them, would disputetheir monopoly of exploitation. The defection of certain of their memberswho had found it to their advantage to go over bag and baggage to the rivalhouse had roused them, to the wildest fury. They talked of decapitation."... Burked.... Treachery.... Shame.... Sold...."

Others did not worry about the living: they were incensed against the dead,whose sales without royalties choked up the market. It appeared that theworks of De Musset had just become public property, and were selling fartoo well. And so they demanded that the State should give them rigorousprotection, and heavily tax the masterpieces of the past so as to checktheir circulation at reduced prices, which, they declared, was unfaircompetition with the work of living artists.

They stopped each other to hear the takings of such and such a theater onthe preceding evening. They all went into ecstasies over the fortune ofa veteran dramatist, famous in two continents--a man whom they despised,though they envied him even more. From the incomes of authors they passedto those of the critics. They talked of the sum--(pure calumny, nodoubt)--received by one of their colleagues for every first performanceat one of the theaters on the boulevards, the consideration being that heshould speak well of it. He was an honest man: having made his bargain hestuck to it: but his great secret lay--(so they said)--in so eulogizing thepiece that it would be taken off as quickly as possible so that there mightbe many new plays. The tale--(or the account)--caused laughter, but nobodywas surprised.

And mingled with all that talk they threw out fine phrases: they talked of"poetry" and "art for art's sake." But through it all there rang "art formoney's sake"; and this jobbing spirit, newly come into French literature,scandalized Christophe. As he understood nothing at all about their talk ofmoney he had given it up. But then they began to talk of letters, or ratherof men of letters.--Christophe pricked up his ears as he heard the name ofVictor Hugo.

They were debating whether he had been cuckolded: they argued at lengthabout the love of Sainte-Beuve and Madame Hugo. And then they turned tothe lovers of George Sand and their respective merits. That was the chiefoccupation of criticism just then: when they had ransacked the houses ofgreat men, rummaged through the closets, turned out the drawers, ransackedthe cupboards, they burrowed down to their inmost lives. The attitudeof Monsieur de Lauzun lying flat under the bed of the King and Madamede Montespan was the attitude of criticism in its cult of history andtruth--(everybody just then, of course, made a cult of truth). These youngmen were subscribers to the cult: no detail was too small for them in theirsearch for truth. They applied it to the art of the present as well as tothat of the past: and they analyzed the private life of certain of the morenotorious of their contemporaries with the same passion for exactness.It was a queer thing that they were possessed of the smallest details ofscenes which are usually enacted without witnesses. It was really as thoughthe persons concerned had been the first to give exact information to thepublic out of their great devotion to the truth.

Christophe was more and more embarrassed and tried to talk to his neighborsof something else; but nobody listened to him. At first they asked hima few vague questions about Germany--questions which, to his amazement,displayed the almost complete ignorance of these distinguished andapparently cultured young men concerning the most elementary things oftheir work--literature and art--outside Paris; at most they had heard of afew great names: Hauptmann, Sudermann, Liebermann, Strauss (David, Johann,Richard), and they picked their way gingerly among them for fear of gettingmixed. If they had questioned Christophe it was from politeness rather thanfrom curiosity: they had no curiosity: they hardly seemed to notice hisreplies: and they hurried back at once to the Parisian topics which wereregaling the rest of the company.

Christophe timidly tried to talk of music. Not one of these men of letterswas a musician. At heart they considered music an inferior art. But thegrowing success of music during the last few years had made them secretlyuneasy: and since it was the fashion they pretended to be interested in it.They frothed especially about a new opera and declared that music datedfrom its performance, or at least the new era in music. This idea madethings easy for their ignorance and snobbishness, for it relieved themof the necessity of knowing anything else. The author of the opera, aParisian, whose name Christophe heard for the first time, had, said some,made a clean sweep of all that had gone before him, cleaned up, renovated,and recreated music. Christophe started at that. He asked nothing betterthan to believe in genius. But such a genius as that, a genius who had atone swoop wiped out the past.... Good heavens! He must be a lusty lad: howthe devil had he done it? He asked for particulars. The others, who wouldhave been hard put to it to give any explanation and were disconcerted byChristophe, referred him to the musician of the company, Theophile Goujart,the great musical critic, who began at once to talk of sevenths and ninths.Goujart knew music much as Sganarelle knew Latin....

Finding himself with a man who "understood Latin" he prudently took refugein the chatter of esthetics. From that impregnable fortress he began tobombard Beethoven, Wagner, and classical art, which was not before thehouse (but in France it is impossible to praise an artist without makingas an offering a holocaust of all those who are unlike him). He announcedthe advent of a new art which trampled under foot the conventions of thepast. He spoke of a new musical language which had been discovered by theChristopher Columbus of Parisian music, and he said it made an end of thelanguage of the classics: that was a dead language.

Christophe reserved his opinion of this reforming genius to wait untilhe had seen his work before he said anything: but in spite of himself hefelt an instinctive distrust of this musical Baal to whom all music wassacrificed. He was scandalized to hear the Masters so spoken of: and heforgot that he had said much the same sort of thing in Germany. He who athome had thought himself a revolutionary in art, he who had scandalizedothers by the boldness of his judgments and the frankness of hisexpressions, felt, as soon as he heard these words spoken in France, thathe was at heart a conservative. He tried to argue, and was tactless enoughto speak, not like a man of culture, who advances arguments withoutexposition, but as a professional, bringing out disconcerting facts. He didnot hesitate to plunge into technical explanations: and his voice, as hetalked, struck a note which was well calculated to offend the ears of acompany of superior persons to whom his arguments and the vigor with whichhe supported them were alike ridiculous. The critic tried to demolishhim with an attempt at wit, and to end the discussion which had shownChristophe to his stupefaction that he had to deal with a man who didnot in the least know what he was talking about. And so they came tothe opinion that the German was pedantic and superannuated: and withoutknowing anything about it they decided that his music was detestable. ButChristophe's bizarre personality had made an impression on the company ofyoung men, and with their quickness in seizing on the ridiculous they hadmarked the awkward, violent gestures of his thin arms with their enormoushands, and the furious glances that darted from his eyes as his voice roseto a falsetto. Sylvain Kohn saw to it that his friends were kept amused.

Conversation had deserted literature in favor of women. As a matter offact they were only two aspects of the same subject: for their literaturewas concerned with nothing but women, and their women were concerned withnothing but literature, they were so much taken up with the affairs and menof letters.

They spoke of one good lady, well known in Parisian society, who had, itwas said, just married her lover to her daughter, the better to keep him.Christophe squirmed in his chair, and tactlessly made a face of disgust.Kohn saw it, and nudged his neighbor and pointed out that the subjectseemed to excite the German--that no doubt he was longing to know the lady.Christophe blushed, muttered angrily, and finally said hotly that suchwomen ought to be whipped. His proposition was received with a shout ofHomeric laughter: and Sylvain Kohn cooingly protested that no man shouldtouch a woman, even with a flower, etc., etc. (In Paris he was the veryKnight of Love.) Christophe replied that a woman of that sort was neithermore nor less than a bitch, and that there was only one remedy for viciousdogs: the whip. They roared at him. Christophe said that their gallantrywas hypocritical, and that those who talked most of their respect for womenwere those who possessed the least of it: and he protested against thesescandalous tales. They replied that there was no scandal in it, and that itwas only natural: and they were all agreed that the heroine of the storywas not only a charming woman, but _the_ Woman, _par excellence_. TheGerman waxed indignant. Sylvain Kohn asked him slyly what he thought Womanwas like. Christophe felt that they were pulling his leg and laying a trapfor him: but he fell straight into it in the violent expression of hisconvictions. He began to explain his ideas on love to these banteringParisians. He could not find his words, floundered about after them, andfinally fished up from the phrases he remembered such impossible words,such enormities, that he had all his hearers rocking with laughter, whileall the time he was perfectly and admirably serious, never bothered aboutthem, and was touchingly impervious to their ridicule: for he could nothelp seeing that they were making fun of him. At last he tied himself upin a sentence, could not extricate himself, brought his fist down on thetable, and was silent.

They tried to bring him back into the discussion: he scowled and did notflinch, but sat with his elbows on the table, ashamed and irritated. Hedid not open his lips again, except to eat and drink, until the dinner wasover. He drank enormously, unlike the Frenchmen, who only sipped theirwine. His neighbor wickedly encouraged him, and went on filling his glass,which he emptied absently. But, although he was not used to these excesses,especially after the weeks of privation through which he had passed, hetook his liquor well, and did not cut so ridiculous a figure as the othershoped. He sat there lost in thought: they paid no attention to him: theythought he was made drowsy by the wine. He was exhausted by the effort offollowing the conversation in French, and tired of hearing about nothingbut literature--actors, authors, publishers, the chatter of the _coulisses_and literary life: everything seemed to be reduced to that. Amid all thesenew faces and the buzz of words he could not fix a single face, nor asingle thought. His short-sighted eyes, dim and dreamy, wandered slowlyround the table, and they rested on one man after another without seemingto see them. And yet he saw them better than any one, though he himself wasnot conscious of it. He did not, like these Jews and Frenchmen, peck atthe things he saw and dissect them, tear them to rags, and leave them intiny, tiny pieces. Slowly, like a sponge, he sucked up the essence of menand women, and bore away their image in his soul. He seemed to have seennothing and to remember nothing. It was only long afterwards--hours, oftendays--when he was alone, gazing in upon himself, that he saw that he hadborne away a whole impression.

But for the moment he seemed to be just a German boor, stuffing himselfwith food, concerned only with not missing a mouthful. And he heard nothingclearly, except when he heard the others calling each other by name, andthen, with a silly drunken insistency, he wondered why so many Frenchmenhave foreign names: Flemish, German, Jewish, Levantine, Anglo- orSpanish-American.

He did not notice when they got up from the table. He went on sittingalone: and he dreamed of the Rhenish hills, the great woods, the tilledfields, the meadows by the waterside, his old mother. Most of the othershad gone. At last he thought of going, and got up, too, without lookingat anybody, and went and took down his hat and cloak, which were hangingby the door. When he had put them on he was turning away without sayinggood-night, when through a half-open door he saw an object which fascinatedhim: a piano. He had not touched a musical instrument for weeks. He went inand lovingly touched the keys, sat down just as he was, with his hat on hishead and his cloak on his shoulders, and began to play. He had altogetherforgotten where he was. He did not notice that two men crept into the roomto listen to him. One was Sylvain Kohn, a passionate lover of music--Godknows why! for he knew nothing at all about it, and he liked bad musicjust as well as good. The other was the musical critic, Theophile Goujart.He--it simplifies matters so much--neither understood nor loved music: butthat did not keep him from talking about it. On the contrary: nobody is sofree in mind as the man who knows nothing of what he is talking about: forto such a man it does not matter whether he says one thing more thananother.

Theophile Goujart was tall, strong, and muscular: he had a black beard,thick curls on his forehead, which was lined with deep inexpressivewrinkles, short arms, short legs, a big chest: a type of woodman or porterof the Auvergne. He had common manners and an arrogant way of speaking. Hehad gone into music through politics, at that time the only road to successin France. He had attached himself to the fortunes of a Minister to whom hehad discovered that he was distantly related--a son "of the bastard of hisapothecary." Ministers are not eternal, and when it seemed that the day ofhis Minister was over Theophile Goujart deserted the ship, taking with himall that he could lay his hands on, notably several orders: for he lovedglory. Tired of politics, in which for some time past he had receivedvarious snubs, both on his own account and on that of his patron, helooked out for a shelter from the storm, a restful position in which hecould annoy others without being himself annoyed. Everything pointed tocriticism. Just at that moment there fell vacant the post of musical criticto one of the great Parisian papers. The previous holder of the post, ayoung and talented composer, had been dismissed because he insisted onsaying what he thought of the authors and their work. Goujart had nevertaken any interest in music, and knew nothing at all about it: he waschosen without a moment's hesitation. They had had enough of competentcritics: with Goujart there was at least nothing to fear: he did not attachan absurd importance to his opinions: he was always at the editor's orders,and ready to comply with a slashing article or enthusiastic approbation.That he was no musician was a secondary consideration. Everybody inFrance knows a little about music. Goujart quickly acquired the requisiteknowledge. His method was quite simple: it consisted in sitting at everyconcert next to some good musician, a composer if possible, and getting himto say what he thought of the works performed. At the end of a few monthsof this apprenticeship, he knew his job: the fledgling could fly. He didnot, it is true, soar like an eagle: and God knows what howlers Goujartcommitted with the greatest show of authority in his paper! He listened andread haphazard, stirred the mixture up well in his sluggish brains, andarrogantly laid down the law for others; he wrote in a pretentious style,interlarded with puns, and plastered over with an aggressive pedantry: hehad the mind of a schoolmaster. Sometimes, every now and then, he drew downon himself cruel replies: then he shammed dead, and took good care not toanswer them. He was a mixture of cunning and thick-headedness, insolent orgroveling as circumstances demanded. He cringed to the masters who had anofficial position or an established fame (he had no other means of judgingmerit in music). He scorned everybody else, and exploited writers who werestarving. He was no fool.

In spite of his reputation and the authority he had acquired, he knew inhis heart of hearts that he knew nothing about music: and he recognizedthat Christophe knew a great deal about it. Nothing would have induced himto say so: but it was borne in upon him. And now he heard Christophe play:and he made great efforts to understand him, looking absorbed, profound,without a thought in his head: he could not see a yard ahead of him throughthe fog of sound, and he wagged his head solemnly as one who knew andadjusted the outward and visible signs of his approval to the fluttering ofthe eyelids of Sylvain Kohn, who found it hard to stand still.

At last Christophe, emerging to consciousness from the fumes of wine andmusic, became dimly aware of the pantomime going on behind his back: heturned and saw the two amateurs of music. They rushed at him and violentlyshook hands with him--Sylvain Kohn gurgling that he had played like a god,Goujart declaring solemnly that he had the left hand of Rubinstein and theright hand of Paderewski (or it might be the other way round). Both agreedthat such talent ought not to be hid under a bushel, and they pledgedthemselves to reveal it. And, incidentally, they were both resolved toextract from it as much honor and profit as possible.

From that day on Sylvain Kohn took to inviting Christophe to his rooms,and put at his disposal his excellent piano, which he never used himself.Christophe, who was bursting with suppressed music, did not need to beurged, and accepted: and for a time he made good use of the invitation.

At first all went well. Christophe was only too happy to play: andSylvain Kohn was tactful enough to leave him to play in peace. He enjoyedit thoroughly himself. By one of those queer phenomena which must bein everybody's observation, the man, who was no musician, no artist,cold-hearted and devoid of all poetic feeling and real kindness, wasenslaved sensually by Christophe's music, which he did not understand,though he found in it a strongly voluptuous pleasure. Unfortunately, hecould not hold his tongue. He had to talk, loudly, while Christophe wasplaying. He had to underline the music with affected exclamations, like aconcert snob, or else he passed ridiculous comment on it. Then Christophewould thump the piano, and declare that he could not go on like that. Kohnwould try hard to be silent: but he could not do it: at once he wouldbegin again to sniffle, sigh, whistle, beat time, hum, imitate the variousinstruments. And when the piece was ended he would have burst if he had notgiven Christophe the benefit of his inept comment.

He was a queer mixture of German sentimentality, Parisian humbug, andintolerable fatuousness. Sometimes he expressed second-hand preciousopinions; sometimes he made extravagant comparisons; and then he wouldmake dirty, obscene remarks, or propound some insane nonsense. By way ofpraising Beethoven, he would point out some trickery, or read a lascivioussensuality into his music. The _Quartet in C Minor_ seemed to him jollyspicy. The sublime _Adagio of the Ninth Symphony_ made him think ofCherubino. After the three crashing chords at the opening of the _Symphonyin C Minor_, he called out: "Don't come in! I've some one here." He admiredthe Battle of _Heldenleben_ because he pretended that it was like the noiseof a motor-car. And always he had some image to explain each piece, apuerile incongruous image. Really, it seemed impossible that he could haveany love for music. However, there was no doubt about it: he really didlove it: at certain passages to which he attached the most ridiculousmeanings the tears would come into his eyes. But after having been moved bya scene from Wagner, he would strum out a gallop of Offenbach, or sing somemusic-hall ditty after the _Ode to Joy_. Then Christophe would bob aboutand roar with rage. But the worst of all to bear was not when Sylvain Kohnwas absurd so much as when he was trying to be profound and subtle, when hewas trying to impress Christophe, when it was Hamilton speaking, and notSylvain Kohn. Then Christophe would scowl blackly at him, and squash himwith cold contempt, which hurt Hamilton's vanity: very often these musicalevenings would end in a quarrel. But Kohn would forget it next day, andChristophe, sorry for his rudeness, would make a point of going back.

That would not have mattered much if Kohn had been able to refrain frominviting his friends to hear Christophe. But he could not help wanting toshow off his musician. The first time Christophe found in Kohn's roomsthree or four little Jews and Kohn's mistress--a large florid woman, allpaint and powder, who repeated idiotic jokes and talked about her food, andthought herself a musician because she showed her legs every evening in theRevue of the Varietes--Christophe looked black. Next time he told SylvainKohn curtly that he would never again play in his rooms. Sylvain Kohn sworeby all his gods that he would not invite anybody again. But he did so bystealth, and hid his guests in the next room. Naturally, Christophe foundthat out, and went away in a fury, and this time did not return.

And yet he had to accommodate Kohn, who had introduced him to variouscosmopolitan families, and found him pupils.

* * * * *

A few days after Theophile Goujart hunted Christophe up in his lair. He didnot seem to mind his being in such a horrible place. On the contrary, hewas charming. He said:

"I thought perhaps you would like to hear a little music from time to time:and as I have tickets for everything, I came to ask if you would care tocome with me."

Christophe was delighted. He was glad of the kindly attention, and thankedhim effusively. Goujart was a different man from what he had been at theirfirst meeting. He had dropped his conceit, and, man to man, he was timid,docile, anxious to learn. It was only when they were with others that heresumed his superior manner and his blatant tone of voice. His eagerness tolearn had a practical side to it. He had no curiosity about anything thatwas not actual. He wanted to know what Christophe thought of a score he hadreceived which he would have been hard put to it to write about, for hecould hardly read a note.

They went to a symphony concert. They had to go in by the entrance to amusic-hall. They went down a winding passage to an ill-ventilated hall:the air was stifling: the seats were very narrow, and placed too closetogether: part of the audience was standing and blocking up every wayout:--the uncomfortable French. A man who looked as though he werehopelessly bored was racing through a Beethoven symphony as though hewere in a hurry to get to the end of it. The voluptuous strains of astomach-dance coming from the music-hall next door were mingled with thefuneral march of the _Eroica_. People kept coming in and taking theirseats, and turning their glasses on the audience. As soon as the lastperson had arrived, they began to go out again. Christophe strained everynerve to try and follow the thread of the symphony through the babel;and he did manage to wrest some pleasure from it--(for the orchestra wasskilful, and Christophe had been deprived of symphony music for a longtime)--and then Goujart took his arm and, in the middle of the concert,said:

"Now let us go. We'll go to another concert."

Christophe frowned: but he made no reply and followed his guide. They wenthalf across Paris, and then reached another hall, that smelled of stables,in which at other times fairy plays and popular pieces were given--(inParis music is like those poor workingmen who share a lodging: when oneof them leaves the bed, the other creeps into the warm sheets). No air,of course: since the reign of Louis XIV the French have considered airunhealthy: and the ventilation of the theaters, like that of old atVersailles, makes it impossible for people to breathe. A noble old man,waving his arms like a lion-tamer, was letting loose an act of Wagner: thewretched beast--the act--was like the lions of a menagerie, dazzled andcowed by the footlights, so that they have to be whipped to be remindedthat they are lions. The audience consisted of female Pharisees and foolishwomen, smiling inanely. After the lion had gone through its performance,and the tamer had bowed, and they had both been rewarded by the applause ofthe audience, Goujart suggested that they should go to yet another concert.But this time Christophe gripped the arms of his stall, and declared thathe would not budge: he had had enough of running from concert to concert,picking up the crumbs of a symphony and scraps of a concert on the way.In vain did Goujart try to explain to him that musical criticism in Pariswas a trade in which it was more important to see than to hear. Christopheprotested that music was not written to be heard in a cab, and needed moreconcentration. Such a hotch-potch of concerts was sickening to him: one ata time was enough for him.

He was much surprised at the extraordinary number of concerts in Paris.Like most Germans, he thought that music held a subordinate place inFrance: and he expected that it would be served up in small delicateportions. By way of a beginning, he was given fifteen concerts in sevendays. There was one for every evening in the week, and often two or threean evening at the same time in different quarters of the city. On Sundaysthere were four, all at the same time. Christophe marveled at this appetitefor music. And he was no less amazed at the length of the programs. Tillthen he had thought that his fellow-countrymen had a monopoly of theseorgies of sound which had more than once disgusted him in Germany. Hesaw now that the Parisians could have given them points in the matter ofgluttony. They were given full measure: two symphonies, a concerto, oneor two overtures, an act from an opera. And they came from all sources:German, Russian, Scandinavian, French--beer, champagne, orgeat, wine--theygulped down everything without winking. Christophe was amazed that theseindolent Parisians should have had such capacious stomachs. They did notsuffer for it at all. It was the cask of the Danaides. It held nothing.

It was not long before Christophe perceived that this mass of musicamounted to very little really. He saw the same faces and heard thesame pieces at every concert. Their copious programs moved in a circle.Practically nothing earlier than Beethoven. Practically nothing later thanWagner. And what gaps between them! It seemed as though music were reducedto five or six great German names, three or four French names, and, sincethe Franco-Russian alliance, half a dozen Muscovites. None of the oldFrench Masters. None of the great Italians. None of the German giants ofthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. No contemporary German music,with the single exception of Richard Strauss, who was more acute than therest, and came once a year to plant his new works on the Parisian public.No Belgian music. No Tschek music. But, most surprising of all, practicallyno contemporary French music. And yet everybody was talking about itmysteriously as a thing that would revolutionize the world. Christophe wasyearning for an opportunity of hearing it: he was very curious about it,and absolutely without prejudice: he was longing to hear new music, and toadmire the works of genius. But he never succeeded in hearing any of it:for he did not count a few short pieces, quite cleverly written, but coldand brain-spun, to which he had not listened very attentively.

* * * * *

While he was waiting to form an opinion, Christophe tried to find outsomething about it from musical criticism.

That was not easy. It was like the Court of King Petaud. Not only didthe various papers lightly contradict each other: but they contradictedthemselves in different articles--almost on different pages. To readthem all was enough to drive a man crazy. Fortunately, the critics onlyread their own articles, and the public did not read any of them. ButChristophe, who wanted to gain a clear idea about French musicians, laboredhard to omit nothing: and he marveled at the agility of the critics, whodarted about in a sea of contradictions like fish in water.

But amid all these divergent opinions one thing struck him: the pedanticmanner of most of the critics. Who was it said that the French were amiablefantastics who believed in nothing? Those whom Christophe saw were morehag-ridden by the science of music--even when they knew nothing--than allthe critics on the other side of the Rhine.

At that time the French musical critics had set about learning what musicwas. There were even a few who knew something about it: they were men oforiginal thought, who had taken the trouble to think about their art, andto think for themselves. Naturally, they were not very well known: theywere shelved in their little reviews: with only one or two exceptions,the newspapers were not for them. They were honest men--intelligent,interesting, sometimes driven by their isolation to paradox and the habitof thinking aloud, intolerance, and garrulity. The rest had hastily learnedthe rudiments of harmony: and they stood gaping in wonder at their newlyacquired knowledge. Like Monsieur Jourdain when he learned the rules ofgrammar, they marvelled at their knowledge:

They only babbled of theme and counter-theme, of harmonies and resultantsounds, of consecutive ninths and tierce major. When they had labeled thesucceeding harmonies which made up a page of music, they proudly moppedtheir brows: they thought they had explained the music, and almost believedthat they had written it. As a matter of fact, they had only repeated itin school language, like a boy making a grammatical analysis of a page ofCicero. But it was so difficult for the best of them to conceive music asa natural language of the soul that, when they did not make it an adjunctto painting, they dragged it into the outskirts of science, and reduced itto the level of a problem in harmonic construction. Some who were learnedenough took upon themselves to show a thing or two to past musicians. Theyfound fault with Beethoven, and rapped Wagner over the knuckles. Theylaughed openly at Berlioz and Gluck. Nothing existed for them just then butJohann Sebastian Bach, and Claude Debussy. And Bach, who had lately beenroundly abused, was beginning to seem pedantic, a periwig, and in fine, ahack. Quite distinguished men extolled Rameau in mysterious terms--Rameauand Couperin, called the Great.

There were tremendous conflicts waged between these learned men. They wereall musicians: but as they all affected different styles, each of themclaimed that his was the only true style, and cried "Raca!" to that oftheir colleagues. They accused each other of sham writing and sham culture,and hurled at each other's heads the words "idealism" and "materialism,""symbolism" and "verism," "subjectivism" and "objectivism." Christophethought it was hardly worth while leaving Germany to find the squabblesof the Germans in Paris. Instead of being grateful for having good musicpresented in so many different fashions, they would only tolerate their ownparticular fashion: and a new _Lutrin_, a fierce war, divided musiciansinto two hostile camps, the camp of counterpoint and the camp of harmony.Like the _Gros-boutiens_ and the _Petits-boutiens_, one side maintainedwith acrimony that music should be read horizontally, and the other thatit should be read vertically. One party would only hear of full-soundingchords, melting concatenations, succulent harmonies: they spoke of music asthough it were a confectioner's shop. The other party would not hear of theear, that trumpery organ, being considered: music was for them a lecture,a Parliamentary assembly, in which all the orators spoke at once withoutbothering about their neighbors, and went on talking until they had done:if people could not hear, so much the worse for them! They could read theirspeeches next day in the _Official Journal_: music was made to be read, andnot to be heard. When Christophe first heard of this quarrel between the_Horizontalists_ and the _Verticalists_, he thought they were all mad. Whenhe was summoned to join in the fight between the army of _Succession_ andthe army of _Superposition_, he replied, with his usual formula, which wasvery different from that of Sosia:

"Gentlemen, I am everybody's enemy."

And when they insisted, saying:

"Which matters most in music, harmony or counterpoint?"

He replied:

"Music. Show me what you have done."

They were all agreed about their own music. These intrepid warriors who,when they were not pummeling each other, were whacking away at some deadMaster whose fame had endured too long, were reconciled by the one passionwhich was common to them all: an ardent musical patriotism. France was tothem _the_ great musical nation. They were perpetually proclaiming thedecay of Germany. That did not hurt Christophe. He had declared so himself,and therefore was not in a position to contradict them. But he was a littlesurprised to hear of the supremacy of French music: there was, in fact,very little trace of it in the past. And yet French musicians maintainedthat their art had been admirable from the earliest period. By way ofglorifying French music, they set to work to throw ridicule on the famousmen of the last century, with the exception of one Master, who was verygood and very pure--and a Belgian. Having done that amount of slaughter,they were free to admire the archaic Masters, who had been forgotten, whilea certain number of them were absolutely unknown. Unlike the lay schoolsof France which date the world from the French Revolution, the musiciansregarded it as a chain of mighty mountains, to be scaled before it couldbe possible to look back on the Golden Age of music, the Eldorado of art.After a long eclipse the Golden Age was to emerge again: the hard wallwas to crumble away: a magician of sound was to call forth in full flowera marvelous spring: the old tree of music was to put forth young greenleaves: in the bed of harmony thousands of flowers were to open theirsmiling eyes upon the new dawn: and silvery trickling springs were tobubble forth with the vernal sweet song of streams--a very idyl.

Christophe was delighted. But when he looked at the bills of the Parisiantheaters, he saw the names of Meyerbeer, Gounod, Massenet, and Mascagni andLeoncavallo--names with which he was only too familiar: and he asked hisfriends if all this brazen music, with its girlish rapture, its artificialflowers, like nothing so much as a perfumery shop, was the garden of Armidethat they had promised him. They were hurt and protested: if they were tobe believed, these things were the last vestiges of a moribund age: noone attached any value to them. But the fact remained that _CavalleriaRusticana_ flourished at the Opera Comique, and _Pagliacci_ at the Opera:Massenet and Gounod were more frequently performed than anybody else, andthe musical trinity--_Mignon_, _Les Huguenots_, and _Faust_--had safelycrossed the bar of the thousandth performance. But these were only trivialaccidents: there was no need to go and see them. When some untoward factupsets a theory, nothing is more simple than to ignore it. The Frenchcritics shut their eyes to these blatant works and to the public whichapplauded them: and only a very little more was needed to make them ignorethe whole music-theater in France. The music-theater was to them a literaryform, and therefore impure. (Being all literary men, they set a ban onliterature.) Any music that was expressive, descriptive, suggestive--inshort, any music with any meaning--was condemned as impure. In everyFrenchman there is a Robespierre. He must be for ever chopping the headoff something or somebody to purify it. The great French critics onlyrecognized pure music: the rest they left to the rabble.

Christophe was rather mortified when he thought how vulgar his taste mustbe. But he found some comfort in the discovery that all these musicians whodespised the theater spent their time in writing for it: there was not oneof them who did not compose operas. But no doubt that was also a trivialaccident. They were to be judged, as they desired, by their pure music.Christophe looked about for their pure music.

* * * * *

Theophile Goujart took him to the concerts of a Society dedicated tothe national art. There the new glories of French music were elaboratedand carefully hatched. It was a club, a little church, with severalside-chapels. Each chapel had its saint, each saint his devotees, whoblackguarded the saint in the next chapel. It was some time beforeChristophe could differentiate between the various saints. Naturallyenough, being accustomed to a very different sort of art, he was at firstbaffled by the new music, and the more he thought he understood it, thefarther was he from a real understanding.

It all seemed to him to be bathed in a perpetual twilight. It was a dullgray ground on which were drawn lines, shading off and blurring intoeach other, sometimes starting from the mist, and then sinking back intoit again. Among all these lines there were stiff, crabbed, and crampeddesigns, as though they were drawn with a set-square--patterns with sharpcorners, like the elbow of a skinny woman. There were patterns in curvesfloating and curling like the smoke of a cigar. But they were all envelopedin the gray light. Did the sun never shine in France? Christophe had onlyhad rain and fog since his arrival, and was inclined to believe so; butit is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails. Thesemen lit up their little lanterns, it is true: but they were like theglow-worm's lamp, giving no warmth and very little light. The titles oftheir works were changed: they dealt with Spring, the South, Love, the Joyof Living, Country Walks; but the music never changed: it was uniformlysoft, pale, enervated, anemic, wasting away. It was then the mode inFrance, among the fastidious, to whisper in music. And they were quiteright: for as soon as they tried to talk aloud they shouted: there was nomean. There was no alternative but distinguished somnolence andmelodramatic declamation.

Christophe shook off the drowsiness that was creeping over him, and lookedat his program; and he was surprised to read that the little puffs of cloudfloating across the gray sky claimed to represent certain definite things.For, in spite of theory, all their pure music was almost always programmusic, or at least music descriptive of a certain subject. It was in vainthat they denounced literature: they needed the support of a literarycrutch. Strange crutches they were, too, as a rule! Christophe observedthe odd puerility of the subjects which they labored to depict--orchards,kitchen-gardens, farmyards, musical menageries, a whole Zoo. Some musicianstransposed for orchestra or piano the pictures in the Louvre, or thefrescoes of the Opera: they turned into music Cuyp, Baudry, and PaulPotter: explanatory notes helped the hearer to recognize the apple ofParis, a Dutch inn, or the crupper of a white horse. To Christophe it waslike the production of children obsessed by images, who, not knowing how todraw, scribble down in their exercise-books anything that comes into theirheads, and naively write down under it in large letters an inscription tothe effect that it is a house or a tree.

But besides these blind image-fanciers who saw with their ears, there werethe philosophers: they discussed metaphysical problems in music: theirsymphonies were composed of the struggle between abstract principles andstated symbols or religions. And in their operas they affected to study thejudicial and social questions of the day: the Declaration of the Rights ofWoman and the Citizen, elaborated by the metaphysicians of the Butte andthe Palais-Bourbon. They did not shrink from bringing the question ofdivorce on to the platform together with the inquiry into the birth-rateand the separation of the Church and State. Among them were to be foundlay symbolists and clerical symbolists. They introduced philosophicrag-pickers, sociological grisettes, prophetic bakers, and apostolicfishermen to the stage. Goethe spoke of the artists of his day, "whoreproduced the ideas of Kant in allegorical pictures." The artists ofChristophe's day wrote sociology in semi-quavers. Zola, Nietzsche,Maeterlinck, Barres, Jaures, Mendes, the Gospel, and the Moulin Rouge, allfed the cistern whence the writers of operas and symphonies drew theirideas. Many of them, intoxicated by the example of Wagner, cried: "And I,too, am a poet!" And with perfect assurance they tacked on to their musicverses in rhyme, or unrhymed, written in the style of an elementary schoolor a decadent feuilleton.

All these thinkers and poets were partisans of pure music. But theypreferred talking about it to writing it. And yet they did sometimes manageto write it. Then they wrote music that was not intended to say anything.Unfortunately, they often succeeded: their music was meaningless--at least,to Christophe. It is only fair to say that he had not the key to it.

In order to understand the music of a foreign nation a man must take thetrouble to learn the language, and not make up his mind beforehand that heknows it. Christophe, like every good German, thought he knew it. That wasexcusable. Many Frenchmen did not understand it any more than he. Like theGermans of the time of Louis XIV, who tried so hard to speak French thatin the end they forgot their own language, the French musicians of thenineteenth century had taken so much pains to unlearn their language thattheir music had become a foreign lingo. It was only of recent years that amovement had sprung up to speak French in France. They did not all succeed:the force of habit was very strong: and with a few exceptions their Frenchwas Belgian, or still smacked faintly of Germany. It was quite natural,therefore, that a German should be mistaken, and declare, with his usualassurance, that it was very bad German, and meant nothing, since he couldmake nothing of it.

Christophe was in exactly that case. The symphonies of the French seemedto him to be abstract, dialectic, and musical themes were opposed andsuperposed arithmetically in them: their combinations and permutationsmight just as well have been expressed in figures or the letters of thealphabet. One man would construct a symphony on the progressive developmentof a sonorous formula which did not seem to be complete until the last pageof the last movement, so that for nine-tenths of the work it never advancedbeyond the grub stage of its existence. Another would erect variations on atheme which was not stated until the end, so that the symphony graduallydescended from the complex to the simple. They were very clever toys. But aman would need to be both very old and very young to be able to enjoy them.They had cost their inventors untold effort. They took years to write afantasy. They worried their hair white in the search for new combinationsof chords--to express ...? No matter! New expressions. As the organ createsthe need, they say, so the expression must in the end create the idea: thechief thing is that the expression should be novel. Novelty at all costs!They had a morbid horror of anything that "had been said." The best of themwere paralyzed by it all. They seemed always to be keeping a fearful guardon themselves, and crossing out what they had written, wondering: "GoodLord! Where did I read that?" ... There are some musicians--especially inGermany--who spend their time in piecing together other people's music. Themusicians of France were always looking out at every bar to see that theyhad not included in their catalogues melodies that had already been used byothers, and erasing, erasing, changing the shape of the note until it waslike no known note, and even ceased to be like a note at all.

But they did not take Christophe in: in vain did they muffle themselvesup in a complicated language, and make superhuman and prodigious efforts,go into orchestral fits, or cultivate inorganic harmonies, an obsessingmonotony, declamations a la Sarah Bernhardt, beginning in a minor key, andgoing on for hours plodding along like mules, half asleep, along the edgeof the slippery slope--always under the mask Christophe found the souls ofthese men, cold, weary, horribly scented, like Gounod and Massenet, buteven less natural. And he repeated the unjust comment on the French ofGluck:

"Let them be: they always go back to their giddy-go-round."

Only they did try so hard to be learned. They took popular songs as themesfor learned symphonies, like dissertations for the Sorbonne. That was thegreat game at the time. All sorts and kinds of popular songs, songs of allnations, were pressed into the service. And they worked them up into thingslike the _Ninth Symphony_ and the _Quartet_ of Cesar Franck, only much moredifficult. A musician would conceive quite a simple air. At once he wouldmix it up with another, which meant nothing at all, though it jarredhideously with the first. And all these people were obviously so calm, soperfectly balanced!...

And there was a young conductor, properly haggard and dressed for the part,who produced these works: he flung himself about, darted lightnings, madeMichael Angelesque gestures as though he were summoning up the armies ofBeethoven or Wagner. The audience, which was composed of society people,was bored to tears, though nothing would have induced them to renounce thehonor of paying a high price for such glorious boredom: and there wereyoung tyros who were only too glad to bring their school knowledge intoplay as they picked up the threads of the music, and they applauded withan enthusiasm as frantic as the gestures of the conductor, and the fearfulnoise of the music....

"What rot!" said Christopher. (For he was well up in Parisian slang bynow.)

* * * * *

But it is easier to penetrate the mystery of Parisian slang than themystery of Parisian music. Christophe judged it with the passion which hebrought to bear on everything, and the native incapacity of the Germans tounderstand French art. At least, he was sincere, and only asked to be putright if he was mistaken. And he did not regard himself as bound by hisjudgment, but left it open to any new impression that might alter it.

As matters stood, he readily admitted that there was much talent in themusic he heard, interesting stuff, certain odd happy rhythms and harmonies,an assortment of fine materials, mellow and brilliant, glittering colors,a perpetual outpouring of invention and cleverness. Christophe wasentertained by it, and learned a thing or two. All these small masters hadinfinitely more freedom of thought than the musicians of Germany: theybravely left the highroad and plunged through the woods. They did theirbest to lose themselves. But they were so clever that they could not manageit. Some of them found themselves on the road again in twenty yards. Otherstired at once, and stopped wherever they might be. There were a few whoalmost discovered new paths, but instead of following them up they sat downat the edge of the wood and fell to musing under a tree. What they mostlacked was will-power, force: they had all the gifts save one--vigor andlife. And all their multifarious efforts were confusedly directed, and werelost on the road. It was only rarely that these artists became conscious ofthe nature of their efforts, and could join forces to a common and a givenend. It was the usual result of French anarchy, which wastes the enormouswealth of talent and good intentions through the paralyzing influence ofits uncertainty and contradictions. With hardly an exception, all the greatFrench musicians, like Berlioz and Saint-Saens--to mention only the mostrecent--have been hopelessly muddled, self-destructive, and forsworn, forwant of energy, want of faith, and, above all, for want of an inward guide.

Christophe, with the insolence and disdain of the latter-day German,thought:

"The French do no more than fritter away their energy in inventing thingswhich they are incapable of using. They need a master of another race, aGluck or a Napoleon, to turn their Revolutions to any account."

And he smiled at the notion of an Eighteenth of Brumaire.

* * * * *

And yet, in the midst of all this anarchy, there was a group striving torestore order and discipline to the minds of artists and public. By wayof a beginning, they had taken a Latin name reminiscent of a clericalinstitution which had flourished thirteen or fourteen centuries ago at thetime of the great Invasion of the Goths and Vandals. Christophe was rathersurprised at their going back so far. It was a good thing, certainly, todominate one's generation. But it looked as though a watch-tower fourteencenturies high might be, a little inconvenient, and more suitable perhapsfor observing the movements of the stars than those of the men of thepresent day. But Christophe was soon reassured when he saw that the sons ofSt. Gregory spent very little time on their tower: they only went up it toring the bells, and spent the rest of their time in the church below. Itwas some time before Christophe, who attended some of their services, sawthat it was a Catholic cult: he had been sure at the outset that theirrites were those of some little Protestant sect. The audience groveled: thedisciples were pious, intolerant, aggressive on the smallest provocation:at their head was a man of a cold sort of purity, rather childish andwilful, maintaining the integrity of his doctrine, religious, moral, andartistic, explaining in abstract terms the Gospel of music to the smallnumber of the Elect, and calmly damning Pride and Heresy. To these twostates of mind he attributed every defect in art and every vice ofhumanity: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and present-day Judaism, whichhe lumped together in one category. The Jews of music were burned ineffigy after being ignominiously dressed. The colossal Handel was soundlytrounced. Only Johann Sebastian Bach attained salvation by the grace of theLord, who recognized that he had been a Protestant by mistake.

The temple of the _Rue Saint-Jacques_ fulfilled an apostolic function:souls and music found salvation there. The rules of genius were taughtthere most methodically. Laborious pupils applied the formulas withinfinite pains and absolute certainty. It looked as though by their piouslabors they were trying to regain the criminal levity of their ancestors:the Aubers, the Adams, and the trebly damned, the diabolical Berlioz, thedevil himself, _diabolus in musica_. With laudable ardor and a sincerepiety they spread the cult of the acknowledged masters. In ten years thework they had to show was considerable: French music was transformed. Notonly the French critics, but the musicians themselves had learned somethingabout music. There were now composers, and even virtuosi, who wereacquainted with the works of Bach. And that was not so common even inGermany! But, above all, a great effort had been made to combat thestay-at-home spirit of the French, who will shut themselves up in theirhomes, and cannot be induced to go out. So their music lacks air: it issealed-chamber music, sofa music, music with no sort of vigor. Thinkof Beethoven composing as he strode across country, rushing down thehillsides, swinging along through sun and rain, terrifying the cattle withhis wild shouts and gestures! There was no danger of the musicians of Parisupsetting their neighbors with the noise of their inspiration, like thebear of Bonn. When they composed they muted the strings of their thought:and the heavy hangings of their rooms prevented any sound from outsidebreaking in upon them.

The _Schola_ had tried to let in fresh air, and had opened the windows uponthe past. But only on the past. The windows were opened upon a courtyard,not into the street. And it was not much use. Hardly had they opened thewindows than they closed the shutters, like old women afraid of catchingcold. And there came up a gust or two of the Middle Ages, Bach, Palestrina,popular songs. But what was the good of that? The room still smelt of staleair. But really that suited them very well: they were afraid of the greatmodern draughts of air. And if they knew more than other people, they alsodenied more in art. Their music took on a doctrinal character: there was norelaxation: their concerts were history lectures, or a string of edifyingexamples. Advanced ideas became academic. The great Bach, he whose music islike a torrent, was received into the bosom of the Church and then tamed.His music was submitted to a transformation in the minds of the _Schola_very like the transformation to which the savagely sensual Bible has beensubmitted in the minds of the English. As for modern music, the doctrinepromulgated was aristocratic and eclectic, an attempt to compound thedistinctive characteristics of the three or four great periods of musicfrom the sixth to the twentieth century. If it had been possible to carryit out, the resulting music would have been like those hybrid structuresraised by a Viceroy of India on his return from his travels, with rarematerials collected in every corner of the earth. But the good sense ofthe French saved them from any such barbarically erudite excesses: theycarefully avoided any application of their theories: they treated them asMoliere treated his doctors: they took their prescriptions, but did notcarry them out. The best of them went their own way. The rest of themcontented themselves in practice with very intricate and difficultexercises in counterpoint: they called them sonatas, quartets, andsymphonies.... "Sonata, what do you desire of me?" The poor thing desirednothing at all except to be a sonata. The idea behind it was abstract